Moonlight on the Snow
by ncfan
Summary: Out of the wilderness comes a cry that can't be heard. From the falling shadows of memory and time comes a story that can't be told, a truth that can't be found. How did it come to this? GinRan. Spoilers for 416.


**Characters**: Rangiku, Gin**  
Summary**: Out of the wilderness comes a cry that can't be heard. From the falling shadows of memory and time comes a story that can't be told, a truth that can't be found. How did it come to this? GinRan. Spoilers for 416.**  
Pairings**: GinRan**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: spoilers for 416. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU'VE READ THE LATEST CHAPTER; I can not emphasize this enough.**  
Timeline**: Chapter 416**  
Author's Note**: God, the Deicide arc has given me so much fresh material for GinRan, but now, oh, God. That's all I can say. Oh, God. Right, I'm afraid I may be getting a little redundant with my GinRan oneshots, but I'm going to write while the getting is still good.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

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"_Gin! Is that you? Gin! Where have you been, Gin?"_

_The full moon is casting its silver light on the fresh snowfall, and the night is cold and silent, snowflakes falling without a word, except for the sound of Rangiku's voice, and her feet crunching in the snow. No one is out tonight; it's too bitterly cold for anyone but the worried or the mad to be venturing out._

_He isn't looking at her; Gin is shifting a swirling vortex of black cloth, with billowing sleeves, about his shoulders and over another layer of white. Rangiku herself is shivering convulsively, digging her fingers under the thin shawl she has drawn up over her threadbare yukata, which was never made to sustain such cold weather._

_Her anger turns to confusion when she recognizes those clothes he's wearing. Rangiku frowns through shuddering lips, blue from winter's grip. "Those are Shinigami clothes," she half-whispers. "Where did you get them?" Under the light of the moon, the pale gold tangle of hair she brushes out of her eyes has been bleached as stark white as Gin's._

"_I've decided." Gin's voice is guarded, and the very closed off nature of it knife Rangiku like a spire of ice. He sweeps the black garment around his shoulders, and turns his back to her, standing disturbing erect and still. "I'm going to become a Shinigami. Become a Shinigami, and change things."_

_Rangiku stares at him, gaping, worry settling cold and heavy in her stomach. What has gotten into him? Overnight, he seems to have changed into an entirely different person._

_Gin turns his head slightly towards her, and Rangiku can see a smear of scarlet, bled to black in the night, on his cheek. Her eyes widen. It's blood. "So that they'll end," the young boy murmurs, "without Rangiku having to cry."_

Rangiku doesn't understand anything anymore.

At first, when she sees him, she doesn't see his injuries, doesn't see his wounds nor the blood seeping from his mouth, nor the absence of an arm ripped off and apart by the monstrous, six-winged Aizen behind her. He looks smaller, more like the small boy who peeled persimmons with the same dull knife Rangiku cut her knotted, tangled hair with. He looks like the boy who could still give unstinting kindness. The little boy who stood with his black shihakusho, the splatter of blood black against his white cheek, as moonlight shone upon the midnight snow.

She screams at Gin, shouts at him to get up, to stop playing dead just to get a reaction out of her. She is shouting at him to get up and fight, if that's what he wants so much.

His eyes flicker open, very briefly, register her in recognition, before falling shut again.

To any onlooker who cared, the look of dawning realization coming over her face would have been a truly horrifying sight to behold. To see her eyes fall wide open, her face to drain of its color and her pulse to quicken and snap out of control.

There is nothing she understands anymore.

She never understood why Gin changed from the slightly strange little boy to the very strange Shinigami, who always seemed to hold secrets from the light, away from her vision and far from where anyone else could see them.

She never understood why he had to turn traitor, and still doesn't understand now, what he's done to end up like this. What has happened? What is going on?

Rangiku knows now only one thing. The one who seemed to leave her never really left at all, and will never leave now. There is no way to leave, out of that deep roaring that comes from the hole within her that she didn't know she had, the emptiness that turns to desolation now. There is no way Rangiku will ever forget Gin.

If Gin could see her now, he would be upset, and maybe feel some spark of remorse. He's done the one thing he hoped he never would, and made Rangiku cry.

He was the only one who could ever make her cry.


End file.
